The electronic distribution of documents, such as by e-mail, provides substantial advantages over conventional distribution methods. One of the most important of these advantages is the ability to allow a user to distribute a given message or document to a number of recipients, substantially instantaneously.
Distribution list functions in commercially available e-mail software, such as Microsoft™ Outlook™, have been designed to help with this issue.
Distribution lists allow a group of selected recipients to be identified. By addressing a message to such a group, a message maybe delivered to each of the members of group, without the sender of the message having to address the message to each of those members individually. The distribution list may be subsequently reused for addressing further messages. Clearly this approach may save a significant amount of time when distributing electronic documents, especially in cases where the number of recipients is large.
Distribution lists may be generated and stored in a mail server of an e-mail system for example, in which case, the distribution lists may be made available to a large number, or possibly all of the users of the e-mail system. Alternatively, distribution lists may be generated and stored on the e-mail client. That is to say locally, on the computer of the individual e-mail user.
Generally, if the distribution lists are held on a mail server, they are controlled by a system administrator. Thus, if a distribution list required by a user does not already exist, then the user must contact the system administrator requesting that the distribution list in question should be created. However, distribution lists generated by system administrators are often subject to certain restrictions. For example, they are usually restricted to users in the same intranet, or domain due to internal policies. Amendments to such distribution lists are usually subject to the agreement of various individuals since the lists are shared. This means that adding or removing a recipient to or from an existing distribution list is often a difficult and slow process. Additionally, there is generally a delay associated with the process of requesting a system administrator to generate a new distribution list and make it available on a mail server.
Therefore, for many situations, distribution lists held on mail servers are perceived to be inflexible and difficult to use by many users, who instead prefer to generate and store their own distribution lists locally.
However, the process of generating distribution lists locally also suffers from certain drawbacks. As any regular user of commercially available e-mail applications knows, the use of distribution lists requires a significant amount of administration both in creating new distribution lists and in amending stored distribution lists. This administrative effort is secondary relative to the primary purpose of e-mail systems; namely, writing and sending e-mails. Thus, for many users, the use of distribution lists represents an irritation that for many situations outweighs the benefits that they provide.
It would therefore be desirable to provide an improved method and system for handling the distribution of electronic documents, which addresses the problems of the prior art.